The latest design coming from the Vinduino project is the Vinduino R3 . The R stands for "radio" or "remote", and this is our 3rd generation design. We used the HackaDay 2015 "Best Product Prize" money to invest in added features and reduce cost, while making the units robust and reliable. Great progress was made with reducing the system power consumption, the unit can now keep working for 2 weeks without solar power recharge. The selected Polycase NEMA enclosure is watertight, sturdy, and easy to install.

With all that, we are looking forward to the first test installations.

For larger agricultural setups, the 6-mile range of the low cost LoRa data radio is an absolute requirement.​The long range modules communicate to a central gateway, which makes the measurement data available on the Internet.

The new design has 4 inputs for (gypsum) soil moisture sensors, driven by insight from last year's measurements that soil moisture measurement at 4 different depths gives more useful details about irrigation water percolation than 3-level measurement.We also included support for an external digital temperature sensor.

​Small growers may not need long range, and can use a simpler setup where the vinduino unit connects directly to the Internet using WiFi. We are using the ESP8266 module, wildly popular in the Maker community because of it's low price and programmability.

It's March, and we have budbreak in our vineyard. Spring is in the air, smell of jasmin everywhere.This is a great time to be in the vineyard.We were hopeful that this Winter would see a lot of rain, but so far El Nino did not bring the much needed relief from a multi-year drought.There is more green coming to vineyards this year. In preparation of the new season, our Vinduino project has been developing a new generation of the Vinduino soil moisture monitor. The picture below shows the printed circuit boards for the electronics, just after their arrival from the factory last week.

The new Vinduino R3 (Remote, 3rd generation) has the following features:

4 inputs for (gypsum) soil moisture sensors

built in (solar) battery charger

support for 6 mile long range (Globalsat LM-210, LoRa) radio module or ESP8266 WiFi

clock module for precise irrigation timing

on board temperature and relative humidity sensor

accessories port for optional irrigation valve control and extra sensor

power management circuits, resulting in lower power consumption

open source

Trial installations start next month. We'll keep you updated on our progress in this blog.